The permission to be cruel: street level bureaucrats and harms against people seeking asylum

Monish Bhatia

doi:10.1007/s10612-020-09515-3

The permission to be cruel: street level bureaucrats and harms against people seeking asylum

Monish Bhatia

Sociology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Immigration and asylum policies and practices in Britain have increasingly turned hostile. People seeking asylum are exposed to a panoply of control measures and rendered vulnerable. The state has exteriorized its controls and drawn-in various actors and agencies who now enact state power in the control of migration. This article moves away from essentialist notions of the state and uncovers the role of what Lipsky (2010) calls ?street level bureaucrats.? It shows the ways in which actors and agencies enact state power and inflict cruelty on asylum seekers through their strategic actions and inactions. Drawing on data from ethnographic research, the article demonstrates how bureaucratic practices create and exacerbate psychological distresses amongst asylum seekers and pushes them into dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations. By doing so, it makes a substantive contribution to the literature on migration, state racism and violence.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	277-292
Number of pages	16
Journal	Critical Criminology
Volume	28
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-020-09515-3
Publication status	Published - Jun 2020

Bibliographical note

The final publication is available at Springer via the link above.

Access to Document

10.1007/s10612-020-09515-3

https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/29400

Cite this

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title = "The permission to be cruel: street level bureaucrats and harms against people seeking asylum",

abstract = "Immigration and asylum policies and practices in Britain have increasingly turned hostile. People seeking asylum are exposed to a panoply of control measures and rendered vulnerable. The state has exteriorized its controls and drawn-in various actors and agencies who now enact state power in the control of migration. This article moves away from essentialist notions of the state and uncovers the role of what Lipsky (2010) calls ?street level bureaucrats.? It shows the ways in which actors and agencies enact state power and inflict cruelty on asylum seekers through their strategic actions and inactions. Drawing on data from ethnographic research, the article demonstrates how bureaucratic practices create and exacerbate psychological distresses amongst asylum seekers and pushes them into dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations. By doing so, it makes a substantive contribution to the literature on migration, state racism and violence.",

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